Monday, June 11, 2012

Roadie-licious!

Here it is, folks: my first Roadie painting ever! And I’ll say the same thing I said the first time I painted Andy. I don’t know why I waited so long to paint him. I guess maybe I thought all his wonderful spots and half-and-half face were a little intimidating, but it turns out he was oh, so fun to paint. Here he is, sitting in my favorite chair, but looking so comfy and ensconced that I didn’t have the heart to make him move. Instead, sensing a portrait in the making, I took my phone out of my pocket and snapped a reference photo.

As it turns out, I didn’t have to wait long before he had vacated the chair and was on to his next project: dragging a fallen tree branch out of the yard and trying to get it through the back door into the house.

First, the initial sketch in black. I used acrylic glazing medium mixed with the black for the gray areas. I wanted the sketch to be sort of finished looking, because I wanted to use just layers of glazes for most of the rest of the painting, with opaque colors in just a few places, and let the vivid underpainting show through a lot more than I usually do.

After the black and gray layer was dry (only a few minutes) I added glazes of magenta, cadmium yellow light, hooker’s green, and phthalo blue. I had in mind that I wanted to let the underpainting colors to be the main colors of the red quilt and the green blanket ... the reason I chose the magenta and green for the glazes in those areas. And Roadie had a lot of bluish highlights in his grays, and sunny highlights on the white of his chest and paws ... the reason I chose those glazes for those areas.

Next I started layering more color glazes, deepening the colors of the background fabrics, and adding purple in some of the cooler, shadowy areas. You can see that I also started lightening up his chest and paws with some opaque white mixed with just a touch of vermilion.

Next, those two different colored eyes.

Next I added some more opaque pale colors to define the lightest parts of his spots and to develop the area around his nose and mouth.

I continued to add more whites and light grays and greens to develop his coloring, added opaque light ochre, Naples yellow and green to the little embroidered flowers in the quilt. I also added some yellow glazing in certain places on the red quilt and the green blanket, to emphasize the highlights from the sunlight coming through the window. Notice that I also “redded out” the greenish shadow to the right of Roadie’s head, because when I stepped back and viewed the painting from a distance, the dark shadow was muddying up the distinctiveness I wanted for Roadie’s shape on that side.

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ABOUT ME

I’m an artist living in the farm country of north Louisiana, along with my husband, our four cats and five dogs.
I love to paint everything (including the walls in our house) and find constant inspiration in my daily life: dogs, cats, cows, horses, trees, fields, ponds and bayous, morning light, afternoon light ... you get the idea.
My work is greatly inspired by the style of America’s Golden Age of Illustration, particularly the work of Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green and others.
I’ve been painting my whole life, and I have sold my work to patrons all over the USA, Canada, the UK and Europe. As a follower of Christ, and with God’s help, my daily goal is to live every aspect of my life to the glory of God, from the most mundane and necessary of chores to the work I enjoy the best, ever grateful to be able to share whatever gifts I most graciously have been given.

Find my art here, too

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Published!

AN ARTIST’S JOURNAL where family, friends and mysterious strangers can see my paintings as they’re created, and where I’m liable to write on just about anything – the joy of creating art; life in the country; and, as a follower of Christ, aspiring to glorify God in all I do.

I’m happy to say that my art and technique has been included in this book by UK author/artist Gill Barron, the fairly famous Painter of Everything (she’s well on her way to painting everything in the entire world, and doing a beautiful job of it, too).

I have two step-by-step projects in the book, as well as several other finished paintings used as illustrations.